Atlas, Slugged

I spent this past weekend celebrating Independence Day, Panamanian style. Actually, in many ways it was an American style celebration as well: I drank a bunch of beer, watched a parade and ate a bunch of junk food at the beach. It occurred to me this weekend that I've had the good fortune of marking three separate independence days this year: in the U.S., Nicaragua and Panama. It almost feels greedy, but then again I think that two extra independence days seems like a fair trade for missing Thanksgiving.

Anyway, Panama's official day of independence from Spain is November 28, and the day started innocently enough. I awoke to the most incredible smell filling my room, and stumbled out to the kitchen to find Hilda preparing filling for tamales. This delighted me, as I had heard people speak high praise of said tamales and had asked her if we might be able to squeeze in a cooking lesson before I left Boquete. Thus, I spent the next hour or so helping her chop veggies and stir up the gooey corn mixture and then, after breakfast, I was granted the important task of tying up the tamale mixture and banana leaves in neat little packages and dropping them into the giant pot of boiling water. Then, anticipating a later feast and thinking that remaining in the house with its tempting aromas would drive me insane, I decided to set out on a nice long walk through the hills.

I mentioned before that Boquete is set in a valley surrounded by green hills, and when the weather is nice, you can pretty much walk in any direction and take in some lovely scenery. My preferred route is a 5-6 mile loop that passes the river through the center of town, the fairgrounds, many coffee fincas, an indigenous neighborhood and lots of beautiful flowers. On this particular day, however, during my walk I felt my mood quickly sinking for reasons that I can't fully explain. I think that I may simply be at a point in my travels where living out of a backpack and starting over every few days has grown a little tiring, even though I've seen beautiful places and met many terrific people along the way. That combined with the fact of missing Thanksgiving at home and Hilda having several family members in town to celebrate the holiday may have pushed me over the edge, and I actually returned to the house feeling a little glum about having another 20 days or so on the road.

My mood lifted slightly when, upon arriving home, Hilda served me one of the aforementioned tamales and it was every bit as savory as I had hoped - seriously delicious. Still, I didn't know what I was going to do with myself for the rest of the afternoon, having finished my latest book the night before and therefore lacking even good reading material, when Hilda's son-in-law, Lucas, came in and said, "Leslie, nos vamos." I had no idea where we might be going but dutifully changed out of my house sandals and headed out the door with him and his wife, Marie. It turned out our destination was the bar around the corner from the house, where we grabbed some seats and a round of beers was quickly ordered. I recalled that Lucas had asked me earlier whether I drank beer and had then repeated this information to Marie, and now everything was coming full circle.

Similar to Nicaragua, the beer offerings consisted of multiple brands that tasted remarkably similar. Here, the options include Panama, Atlas, Soberana (not sure if that one's a joke?), and Balboa, the latter of which is supposedly much stronger than the others and thus generally consumed by men only. This being my first foray into the Panamanian brew, I opted to start with a Panama, which reminded me of many Tonas and Victorias consumed in Nica. After that, I took a cue from Lucas and Marie and switched to Atlas, which tasted...a lot like Panama. Hey, at least they are light beers and won't put you under the table after two or three. This proved especially helpful as, over time, rounds of beers started appearing at the table as friends of Lucas and Marie passed through the bar. Having drunk fairly little alcohol during this journey and certain that my tolerance was the worse for it, I was quite content with sipping away and letting the others forge ahead, but every few minutes or so, either Marie or Lucas would lift my bottle, inspect it for fullness and then nudge it in my direction, encouraging me to get a move on.

As I mentioned, I think the weakness of the beer was my salvation, as I was able to more or less keep up with the others and still walk out the door hours later. I thought we would be heading home after that, but Lucas and Marie had other plans. Instead, we walked to a restaurant on Main Street called Bistro Boquete, a place owned by an American and usually filled with extranjeros, but today packed to the gills with Panamanians angling for a birds' eye view of the passing parade. We joined the masses on the second floor, ordered some food (thankfully) and grabbed spots on the balcony to watch the festivities. I am normally fairly crowd-averse, but in this case I was very glad to be among the masses because the parade was seriously entertaining. Bands from various parts of western Panama participated, each one more elaborate than the next in terms of size, variety of offerings and ostentatiousness of sound and presentation.

Watching the performers of the crowd, I was struck by the diversity of cultures in such a small country. Obviously, the Spanish influence is most prominent here in terms of the physical appearance of the people, architecture, music, etc. but the parade also featured several groups from Bocas del Toro, where the West African influence is much more prominent, and several families in the crowd were wearing the colorful dresses of the Ngobe-Bugle, a local indigenous population. Most of the Panamanians with whom I've spoken seem proud of this cultural diversity and the fact that each group/region offers its own distinct culture and traditions, all of which can be called Panamanian. Anywho, we spent several hours watching the festivities before returning home, finally, to rest.

The next morning, Hilda knocked on my door early as we had made plans to reunite with Lucas, Marie and a group of Hilda's former teaching colleagues to hit the beach. We had a quick coffee and headed out to board the bus to David, where we met up with the rest of the crew. We drove for over an hour on fairly deserted roads and finally arrived at what looked like a swamp with a rickety dock. My heart sank, but then I realized that from here, we had still to board a lancha in order to reach our final destination. This dock made the bridge across the Costa-Rica Panama border look like the Tappan Zee, and several times we thought for sure that some member of our crew was going to be plunged into the muck below, but we all managed to make it safely to the boat. We boarded the lancha and took a quick cruise to a large, sandy island covered in several thatch-roof ranchos, where we encountered some folks hanging out in hammocks and set up around a picnic table under one of the ranchos.

We spent the day lounging, chatting, drinking (rum with milk, anyone?), strolling the beach and watching the locals pull in their fishing nets (sadly, mostly empty on this particular day). I was able to keep up with some of the conversation, but several tipsy Panamanians telling stories excitedly is quite different from chatting with one person over coffee, and I'm sure a lot of it went right over my head. I did learn that in Panama, the expression "caballo muerto en la calle" - roughly, a dead horse in the road - refers to when a person doesn't show up somewhere and the suspected reason is that he/she is indisposed  due to "quality time" with a significant other. I got a kick out of that, and my companions found great entertainment in explaining the significance to me and then asking me to translate the phrase into English.

At the end of our outing, Lucas insisted that I take some photos with a couple of recently caught fish, even though none of it was actually caught by me. He went so far as to insist that I get in the water with one of the nets and place a fish (fresh from the refrigerator) into the net so that it appeared that I was hauling in the day's catch. Unfortunately, I don't have the photo to post right now, but when you see it eventually, just know that it's a fabrication and remember that I never tried to deceive anyone. Actually, the whole scene was pretty funny, but I can't imagine what the man running the place must have thought, being asked to fetch cold fish so that I could use them as photo props. Loca gringa, I suppose.

At the end of the day, the lancha came to collect us and, at the request of some members of our group, the boat operator took us on a little tour of the inlets, including pointing out an area where duendes, or trolls, allegedly come to bathe at the midnight hour. I got a kick out of this little tidbit, but certain (admittedly tipsy) members of the group seemed remarkably fascinated and disturbed by the prospect of a bunch of trolls taking a bath in the river. At any rate, we did not return at midnight to test the validity of the claim.

After disboarding and re-tracing our steps along the dilapidated dock (which was seriously in markedly worse condition hours later) in the pouring rain, we jumped into the van and headed back to David, where Hilda and I then caught the bus back to Boquete and downed a couple of sandwiches and hot chocolates before collapsing in exhaustion. The weekend of revelry among friends was just what I needed to revive my enthusiasm for the trip, and this morning I find myself looking forward once again to my remaining days in Central America. I've got four more days of classes, we are reportedly hitting the beach again on Saturday, and then I'm planning to head to the town of Pedasi before hunkering down in Panama City for the last week or so of my trip.

As a side note, I recently learned that my birthday, December 8, is Mother's Day in Panama. It's considered a very important holiday and the country shuts down so that all citizens can spend the day with their moms. I'm not sure where I'll be on that day, but hopefully there will be some kind of festivities to mark the occasion!